Beacon Academy

Evanston, Ill.

Sponsored

Beacon Academy brings together independent school best practices and challenging curriculum with the independence, freedom, and student-centered methods of Montessori. Beacon students experience a learning community that inspires self-motivation and personal challenge and celebrates intellectual, cultural, and socioeconomic diversity. By graduation, meaningful internships and community engagement ensure that these young adults have mastered the skills, knowledge, and habits of mind necessary to offer the world their intelligence, confidence, and compassion.

Beacon Academy is located in downtown Evanston near Northwestern University and public transportation, positioned to draw students from a wide radius and within easy access to partner institutions throughout the Evanston and Chicago area. Beacon’s curriculum embodies the principle of “learning by doing” by affording students abundant opportunities for hands-on investigation, student-centered discussions, experimentation, critical thinking and fieldwork. Moving beyond the traditional conception of a “classroom,” students at Beacon Academy will engage in fieldwork and apprenticeships with experts with whom they can problem-solve, collaborate, and contribute to ongoing projects of far-reaching significance.

Beacon students possess a passion for learning, curiosity about life, and a deep commitment to engaging in the world. Beacon strives for a student body that is diverse and inclusive, respectful of all members of its immediate and global communities, empathetic, and eager to be socially responsible. Students at Beacon Academy are encouraged to think independently, to be active architects of their own education, to push the boundaries of conventional wisdom and to do so respectfully and responsibly. Moreover, Beacon students will understand education is a process: a journey of peaks and valleys that will require perseverance and resourcefulness.